144 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
stressed syllable must never exceed four, and only
in a particular type of cases may it exceed three.
Corollary: every word containing more than
five syllables must have two stresses. (2) The
stressed syllable regularly follows the unstressed
syllables that accompany it; and more than a
single unstressed syllable may never, follow the
stressed syllable that it accompanies.
Using the term anapaest not of course of a
combination of two short followed by a long
syllable, but of two unstressed syllables followed
by one that is stressed, Sievers claims that the
Hebrew rhythm rests on an anapaestic basis,
and that the normal foot is
x x ’
examples of such feet being MykirAd;, UlF;q;yi, yneB;-lfa
Possible variations of the normal foot are--
(1) x x x ’
(2) x ’, and even
(3) ’
Moreover, since the stress may fall on a syllable
which with an additional and secondary short
syllable corresponds to an original single syllable,
as in the segholates, further variations are x x ’ x,
x x x ’ x , etc., an example of such feet being
j`l,m,ha-ynepli.
1 After Sievers had indicated his theory in outline, Zimmern (Zeit-
schrift fur Assyriologie, xii. 382-392) returned to the examination of the
scansion tablets referred to above (p. 140 f.), and found that between